When the Aliens Land
by MASH-Nut-4077
Summary: Use your imagination. ;D Read and Review! (COMPLETE) Yes, I know the ending sucks... But review anyway?
1. Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come For You?

**(A/N: This will eventually be a chaptered, yet rather short story. More block-issues with the last chapter of Henry... Enjoy... and REVIEW!)**

When Hawkeye was bored... everybody knew it.

Lately, with an all-too-infrequent lull in wounded soldiers, there had been a rash of practical jokes - including one involving an actual rash. Frank was in Margaret's tent, no doubt letting her aid in the icing-down of some swollen bodypart or another.

"Pierce, I'm trying to work. Now get out!"

It must have been the hundredth time in the last three days that Hawkeye had been into Potter's office to start up some meaningless conversation, to make a rude or indecent suggestion about the way the camp was run (Such as nurse shower schedules), or just to wreak havoc in general. Or to wreak havoc _on_ Generals.

Radar was hiding under his desk.

"No no, Colonel, it's really important this time!"

"Like it was important when you wanted permission to set all the clocks back four hours, just for fun?"

"Really, it IS important!"

"Fine, siddown and shut up. You can have a minute of my time, but not a bit longer-"

Hawkeye was already seated, his bloodstained army boots resting on the edge of Potter's desk as he sipped at a glass of brandy. Colonel Potter rolled his eyes.

"Now what's so all-fired important that you've got to interrupt my paperwork? I-Corps needs this in two days, and..."

"Colonel," Hawkeye interrupted, swirling his brandy. "You've got a plan for any type of emergency that might ever hit this camp, right?"

"Just about."

"Well, I just need to know - not up to date on military protocol and such..."

"What IS it?"

Hawkeye looked totally serious. "What do we do if the aliens land?"


	2. Voluntary Guard Duty

The rest of the day, Potter walked around with a faint red mark on his forehead where he had promptly leaned down and whacked his head on his desk.

/But that's ok.../ He thought, walking towards his tent that evening. /The paperwork's done, the orders are given, and there's still some time for a little Zane Grey before I turn in./

Just as he rounded the corner by the Nurse's showers, dutifully noting that Pierce was not attending his usual post - at the hole in the canvas - he saw _why_ Hawkeye was not there. Instead, Hawkeye was walking back and forth in front of Potter's tent, wearing his soldier helmet _and_ carrying... get this... a **gun**. Immediately suspicious and extremely worried, Potter held up his hands and asked in a warning tone

"Now Hawkeye, son... what'n the hell're you doin' with that gun?"

Everybody knew that Hawkeye hated to even look at any type of weapon, so his carrying one could only mean that something was seriously wrong. Hawkeye turned around and looked at the Colonel, before his face broke into a grin.

"Oh, don't worry, it's not loaded. It's just to scare them away."

"Scare who away, son?" Potter dropped his arms to his sides in disbelief, fearing the answer. Various personnel were peeking out of their tents, and BJ was quickly jogging up to the scene. Everyone heard Hawkeye speak as his words punctuated the warm night air.

"Why, the aliens, of course!"

And resumed his pacing back and forth in front of Potter's tent. As Radar peeked out from behind him, Colonel Potter turned around and said to the young Corporal

"Get on the horn and-"

"On the horn and find Dr. Freedman. Got it, sir."


	3. The Nuthouse or the Mothership?

**(A/N: Tiny chapters, but they're being updated daily!)**

"Sidney, I am _not_ crazy. Just bored. I'm only having a little fun!"

Hawkeye sat in the VIP tent with Sidney Freedman, his right leg crossed over his left knee and his hands folded neatly in his lap. On occasion he would unfold them to gesticulate wildly while he spoke, and then become still.

Scrawling something quickly on his notepad, Sidney closed it, and smiled. "I believe you. However, my professional advice would be: Stay away from the guns, loaded or unloaded, so my vacation in Tokyo can remain uninterrupted!" They both laughed briefly, before Hawkeye held the door open for Sidney and followed him out into the early Korean autumn.

"Have a nice trip!"

Hawkeye called out, and got a wave in response as the psychiatrist drove off. Turning around at the sound of cautious footsteps behind him, he grinned as it turned out to be Colonel Potter.

"Well?"

"Still sane."

Potter smiled in relief.

"Good. Gonna knock off all this alien stuff now, right?"

Looking solemn, Hawkeye lifted his eyebrows slightly and declared

"Not on your life."


	4. One Man's Trash

"Pierce, just _what_ do you think you're doing?"

Frank was sleepy, yet his tone was just as annoyingly superior as usual. Hawkeye ignored him and crept out the door, army helmet donned, his arms packed with something they couldn't see. Andy by 'they' I mean Frank and BJ, because Hawkeye had been making enough noise to wake the entire camp.

He just about did, too.

But very few people bothered to investigate as news of the captain's escapades had reached all corners of the 4077th, and they all dismissed it as more of his tomfoolery.

"Captain Pierce! I asked you a question!"

Frank called, now more awake. His reedy voice was muffled a moment later as BJ's pillow thwacked into his head, but the man who threw it was now just as interested in what was going on. After a second's clanking and clattering, BJ managed to turn on his overhead light and saw, through the netting, that Hawkeye was laying out bits of food in a line in the front of their tent. A touch of chipped beef, some greenish-yellow slop that was supposedly the carrots, and a pile of something that was either potatoes, old, hardened grease, or the peas. Nobody was really sure.

Hawkeye turned around as light from the tent shined onto his back, and smiled at the disheveledlooking officers inside.

"It's surprising..." He started, laying out couple of rock hard pancakes, less-than-affectionately nicknamed 'manhole covers', and stood up, dusting his hands off. "What's food to them, is slop to us. Fortunately for them this place is an all-you-can-eat-buffet... I'll let them grab their own plates from the Mess Tent."

Frank made a huffing noise and flopped back down into his cot, rolling over stiffly. BJ gave a tired chuckle and lie back down too, shutting off his light with a 'click'. As Hawkeye came back in, took off his helmet, and quietly sat down on his bunk, BJ noted, before he went to sleep, that his best friend just lay there staring into space.

He didn't sleep.


	5. Freaked Out Ferrets and Surly Shrews

BJ woke up the next morning to a thud, and a very odd noise. It sounded something like...  
  
"GURGHAMUGPHUGGERUNGAAAUGH!"  
  
Accompanied by Hawkeye's tired, yet undying laughter. Without even opening his eyes, BJ was sure he knew what he had heard. Frank had undoubtedly slipped in the mess of ages-old food outside their door, as the court martial threats were growing in volume and severity. Hawkeye didn't care. He never did.  
  
"Frank, go meet Margaret in the showers... she'll help you clean up..." Hawkeye mumbled, causing Frank's indignant shrieks to grow louder and angrier. Eventually they died out, though, as he stalked off... possibly to do just what Hawkeye had suggested. No big surprise there, though.  
  
"Hawk, 'd'you get any sleep last night?"  
  
"Yeah... a bit."  
  
He was lying. BJ could tell.  
  
"Ok. Just checking. You look kinda tired."  
  
"Margaret, he's getting awful serious when he talks about aliens."  
  
"Oh, Frank, don't even give him a second thought. They're both complete morons..."  
  
Frank was changing into the spare set of fatigues that he kept at Margaret's tent... you know, the one he thought nobody else knew about? Yeah. As he pulled his pants on and buckled his belt, while Margaret turned away (hesitantly) she could hear the nervous tone in his voice and rolled her eyes.  
  
"But what if..."  
  
"There's no 'what if', Frank. They're degenerates, Pierce most of all, and that's all there is to it." 


	6. Making Contact

"Attention, all personnel, chopper on the pad! Just one, though! That is all."

BJ opened his eyes to the early morning light and noticed that his tentmates were both gone. Hawkeye, he knew, would be the first one up to the helipad, and Frank was probably in Margaret's tent. His second home.

Stretching and yawning he got up, pulled on a pair of pants, and hurried out the door, up the hill to where the chopper's blades were still rotating in dizzying circles. Hawkeye and Colonel Potter were already there, examining the only woundd man who had come in, and Frank was standing off to the side, apparently having trouble getting his zipper up. God only knew why it had been down in the first place (Though Frank later protested, among comments declaring that it was none of their business, that he had been in the latrine).

"Superficial leg wound." BJ heard the Colonel call out, looking up as he approached. "I'll take him. Lieutenant!" He caught the pilot's attention. "Turn off that confounded windmill and take breakfast in our Mess Tent. You been up awhile, son."

With a nod and a tip of his hat, the pilot complied, going in the opposite direction of Potter and the corpsmen as they headed to OR.

He took a seat among Hawkeye, BJ, Radar, Klinger, Margaret, and Frank after loading his tray with an unpleasant array of drab colors. The usual chatter was present; taunting about Frank's mysterious absence during the night, discussion of various patients, several interjected puns on Hawkeye's part, and nasal analyzation of the food. The Lieutenant sat silently through all of this, enjoying a friendly atmosphere that was rarely found this close to the front.

Fifteen minutes later, Colonel Potter came into the tent. He grabbed himself a cup of coffee and plunked down on the bench next to Frank, who made a little noise of protest.

It was promptly ignored.

"Morning, Swamprats, Margaret, Lebanese Lady, Radar, Lieutenant Marcus." Potter greeted everyone in turn. Lieutenant Marcus swallowed, with some difficulty, his most recent bite of army gruel and said

"Colonel, there's something I've been meaning to ask you." "Fire away." "What was with all those strange markings on your landing pad?"

Looks of confusion came at him from all around the table. "What markings, son?" The Lieutenant looked at him like he was stupid. "On one pad, it looked like somebody spelled out the word 'welcome' with toilet paper. On another pad, there was a shape that looked almost like a piece of... well... of toast. You mean to tell me you don't know anything about this?"

Everyone looked at Hawkeye who studied his plate very intently. His forehead was turning red beneath the locks of black hair that obscured his eyes.

"Your aliens again, Hawk?" BJ teased, while Margaret and Frank dished out glares of disapproval and disgust. Lieutenant Marcus looked to Hawkeye seriously and, with a glance at Frank, said seriously

"Aliens? Oh, but you'll never get them that way. They can't read our writing. You have to spell it out backwards."

There was a clatter as silverware dropped to the table, and everyone groaned.


	7. The Aliens are Coming!

"But Maaaargaret..."

Probably more than half of the sentences Frank ever managed to come up with all by himself, started with those two words.

"Are you absolutely sure that their words have... no truth to them at all?"

Margaret turned around in her seat from where she was giving her blonde hair its necessary one hundred strokes, and fixed Frank with an icy glare. He slipped his hands into his pockets and shuffled his feet, slinking backwards a few inches.

"Yes, Frank, I'm positive. They're morons, each and every last one of them! Pay them no attention, and they'll drop it. The chopper pilot is just one of their degenerate cohorts that they tricked into going along with it." Frank smiled a bit.

"Oh, darling, you're right. You're so smart... that's exactly what my wife would have said, dearest!"

WHUP!

Frank spun, disoriented, out of Margaret's tent amidst angry yells, holding one hand to the place were her hairbrush had connected with his skull. He was tripping over his own boots and trying not to fall down as he stumbled through the night, towards the Swamp.

That's when he saw them.

At first he thought he might have a concussion or something, and contemplated going to postop to enlist in the help of a nurse. His face turned sour at the thought, but Frank immediately turned his attention to this discovery once more.

There were lights. Little white and yellow lights flashing on and off in the sky around the tents and above them. They looked so close, yet at the same time, so far away... Frank screamed like a little girl and ran into the Swamp, slamming the door shut behind him and diving under the covers of his cot. Other personnel, thinking it had been a nurse screaming, rushed out of their tents to see what was the matter.

A few stayed in, just figuring that she was being molested by Hawkeye.

They stared at the lights, swaying slightly where they stood, and then walked slowly back into their tents.

The aliens were coming.

**(A/N: Well, no more updates for a week. I'm going to Washington DC to participate in the National Spelling Bee... review, or I might never come back! :D)**


	8. Paranoid

BJ opened his eyes the following morning to see a quivering lump on top of Frank's cot, huddled under a blanket and shaking. To the left of that was Hawkeye, who was laying on his stomach and staring into space.  
  
"Frank, it's light out," he mumbled suddenly, grinning lewdly at the Major, "Time to put the magazine away."  
  
"You! You!" The blanket pile on top of Frank's cot sputtered indignantly, and eventually he threw the covers off to reveal dark circles under his eyes that perfectly matched those under Hawkeye's. Scowling, he snatched the pocket Bible off his shelf and settled back onto his cot, flipping it open to an earmarked page.  
  
"BJ..." he rolled over and saw Hawkeye's tired face looking back at him. Hawkeye whispered in what he apparently thought was a conspiratorial tone  
  
"My mind... it's starting to play tricks on me," the exhaustion in his voice was evident, and Frank continued to stare at the same page in his Bible, though his beady little eyes flicked regularly towards Hawkeye.  
  
"I saw lights last night," he whispered loudly, looking frightened, "and I think they really are coming for me."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Pierce, "Frank sneered, though he looked worried himself, "you are a complete and total nutjob! You ought to be locked up in the loonybin!"  
  
"Say what you want, Frank..." said Hawkeye, looking at him with wide, bloodshot blue eyes "but I know you saw them too. I know... you saw them..."  
  
"Loony..." mumbled Frank, halfheartedly, before he got up and stormed out of the Swamp in the direction of Margaret's tent. BJ had a good laugh, but Hawkeye just stared solemnly back at him.  
  
"Oh my God. You're serious, aren't you?" he asked, staring at Hawkeye, who simply nodded back.  
  
"They're coming for me. The aliens are coming for me."  
  
"Hawk..."  
  
"ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL! WE GOT WOUNDED! CHOPPERS ON THE PAD AND AMBULANCES IN THE COMPOUND – A FULL HOUSE FOR A FEW DAYS STRAIGHT, AND I'M NOT TALKING POKER HANDS! ALL SHIFTS NEEDED ON THE DOUBLE!"  
  
"Clamp."  
  
And instrument clattered to the floor somewhere, and Hawkeye jumped visibly, glancing around him. Margaret gave him a scornful look from across the room, and ordered sternly  
  
"Pierce, keep your mind on your work!"  
  
"They're coming for you too, Margaret! Watch your back!"  
  
"Did you just threaten a superior officer, Captain Pierce?!" She shrieked, but Hawkeye ignored her and went on operating.  
  
"Zale? What're you doing in here?"  
  
Colonel Potter looked up suspiciously as the Sergeant entered, tying a mask behind his head, but the short man just shrugged.  
  
"Cap'n Pierce requested my presence, sir. Permission to proceed to his table?" he asked with some sarcasm. Potter just scowled darkly and nodded his head.  
  
"SHH! NOT SO LOUD!" Hawkeye said suddenly, looking extremely paranoid. He conversed in low tones with Zale, so quietly that even the assisting nurse couldn't hear, as he operated. Occasionally an odd word such as 'rubber', or 'bedsheets' could be discerned from their conversation, but nothing more.  
  
Sergeant Zale appeared several more times during that session, but when asked about what he was up to, Hawkeye would only mutter 'just being cautious', and go back to work. 


	9. They Have Arrived!

For a few days after that grueling forty-eight hour session, there was a lull in activity at the 4077th. With no wounded and only three men still in recovering in Post-Op, life in camp was peacefully – and pleasantly – dull.  
  
Except when things concerned Hawkeye.  
  
He was so sleep-deprived that most people thought he would drop over dead any day now. Though he made sure to keep clean and shaven, a first, and stayed away from the martinis, another first, his eyes gave it all away. The bright, antique blue of his irises was fading, replaced by little red lines that spiderwebbed across them, partially obscured by drooping lids.  
  
More than once a nurse would have to prod him into wakefulness, because he had fallen asleep leaning against a wall during one of his vulgar suggestions as to evening occupations.  
  
Nearly every mealtime found him perilously close to drowning in the potatoes, until BJ or Margaret or Colonel Potter yanked him out of the offending substance by the back of his collar.  
  
All orders to sleep properly, though, were ignored.  
  
However, what happened even more often than any of these things, were the disappearances. Hawkeye would frequently disappear for hours at a time, only to come wandering back into the camp at twilight, constantly glancing behind him and breaking into a sprint once he could see the Swamp. It was the same every night. He would burst into the tent and dive into his cot, curling up in the fetal position. Frank would say  
  
"Pierce! Where've you been?!"  
  
And Hawkeye would only answer "Preparing. They will come." Then he would spend another sleepless night, staring through the netting of the tent and forcing himself to remain awake, only catching infrequent, insubstantial snatches of slumber.  
  
Tonight, though, was different. Before anyone had lie down for bed, the PA suddenly crackled to life and Radar announced loudly  
  
"Attention all personnel! Colonel Sherman T. Potter has ordered a staff meeting in the Mess Tent at twenty-one hundred hours! That's now, folks! Required to attend the meeting are Major Burns, Major Houlihan, Captain Hunnicutt, Captain Pierce, Lieutenant Father Mulcahy, Corporal Klinger, and Corporal O'Reilly. Oh, hehe, that's me. Ahem! That is all!"  
  
"C'mon, Hawk," BJ said gently, helping Hawkeye up out of the fetal position and onto his feet. They, along with a sour-looking Frank, trudged through the gathering darkness and towards the Mess Tent.  
  
As they walked, BJ started noticing things. Markings. Sometime during early evening, a purple circle with a white cross inside had been painted on the door of every single tent, as well as a few on the ground.  
  
"That... that's the sign of an exorcism!" Frank squeaked in a high-pitched voice. "What's it doing on all the tents?!"  
  
"It's to keep them away," said Hawkeye in a monotone voice, before opening the Mess Tent door and walking inside. Suddenly the lights went out and the camp was thrown into darkness. The backup generator failed to jump into life, so Klinger immediately got up, but the fact that the Mess Tent light was still on stayed him. They were on in other tents as well. It was only the lights outside, the ones mounted on tall poles throughout the compound, that had gone out.  
  
...Odd...  
  
Everyone else was already assembled at one of the tables, staring at them expectantly. Hawkeye, BJ, and Frank all took their seats, and for a moment, there was silence all around. It was Colonel Potter who spoke up.  
  
"Never mind the lights, we'll take care of 'em in a minute. This is important. Pierce, son... did you make those marks out there?"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"The aliens."  
  
There were frustrated murmurs from everyone, but with one look, Potter shut them all up and continued his mild interrogation.  
  
"What about them?"  
  
"If they feel that there are demons in this place, they'll become hostile. You didn't know that?" He looked genuinely surprised. "So I asked Father Mulcahy to perform a series of exorcisms. They will come in peace, since the camp has been cleansed."  
  
Everyone looked expectantly at Father Mulcahy, who gave an apologetic shrug and fingered his silver cross delicately.  
  
"Hawkeye," Colonel Potter said suddenly and sternly, "I _order_ you to knock off this alien bull. It was a cute joke before, but it ain't funny anymore. You're vandalizing US Army property, _wasting_ said property for the purposes of contacting these pretend beings, and just being an overall nuisance!" He barked all this out sharply at an unwavering Hawkeye, who simply stared back.  
  
"Now you'd best get back to your hole and get some sleep, because we're gonna need you in full working condition when those casualties start rolling in again. And you're gonna listen, too, hear me Pierce? I don't wanna have to punish you, but if you put the efficiency of this unit in danger for your tomfoolery, I may just have to. _Comprende?_"  
  
But Hawkeye wasn't looking at him. A sheet of glistening sweat had broken out over his face and he was staring up at the roof of the tent with wide eyes, making something akin to a fearful whimpering noise.  
  
"Wha... what's that sound?" Frank whispered, and for once, Margaret didn't reprimand him. She, too, was glancing between Hawkeye's frightened face and the canvas ceiling as a whirring noise overhead grew louder and louder. Drafts of wind sucked at the tent around them, drawing it up on its ropes and dropping it again as the sound became nearly deafening.  
  
"It's just a helicopter!" Potter roared over the din, but he looked nervous himself. Radar was halfway under the table, squeaking in terror.  
  
"The choppers don't FLY at night!" sobbed the scared little Coporal. Then the eight men (and woman) rushed out of the tent as light flooded the compound, eerie green and nearly blinding. Others were dashing out in nightgowns and bathrobes, shielding their eyes against the strange light.  
  
Then... the screams began.  
  
The nurses, mostly, but Radar and Frank clutched each other, screaming for all they were worth as a giant shape whizzed out of the dark sky above and hovered in midair before descending gently to the ground in the middle of the compound.  
  
Hawkeye was hysterical.  
  
He was bellowing for all he was worth that they had come. The aliens.  
  
_...They had come._


	10. The Truth Is Out There

"Good Lord!" Father Mulcahy cried, staring at the object on the ground as it gave a feeble shudder. Some sort of a door in the front dropped open and an unidentifiable creature crawled out.

"It's an alien!"

"Oh my God!"

"Someone kill it!"

"No, don't do that!"

"They come in peace!"

"How d'you know?"

"Wait... look!"

Looking dazed, and irritated that someone had taped a pair of makeshift green alien antennae between his ears, the camp mutt barked once, wagged his tail, and trotted off into the darkness.

Everyone stared.

"PIERCE!" The collective roar rose so loudly it could have shattered a dozen windows, nurses and corpsman and officers and enlisted screeching their rage at Hawkeye. But the ravenhaired surgeon was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, atop the hill at the chopper pad, two small lights blazed into life, shining up into the black night sky and moving back and forth. A moment later a helicopter came into view, steered precariously in the darkness, and landed, just as the entire population of MASH 4077 flooded up the hill and charged like a herd of angry bulls at Hawkeye and Lieutenant Marcus, the chopper pilot, who were hanging off eachother and laughing fit to burst.

The two men were overtaken by the crowd, pummeled relentlessly by some and laughed at by others. After what seemed like every single man and woman out of the two hundred who resided in camp had had their say with Hawkeye and Lieutenant Marcus, BJ hefted Hawkeye off the ground and helped him back to the Swamp, but not after Hawkeye had recieved a hefty slap in the face from Margaret, who had then burst into a fit of unrestrained mirth.

Once back in their tent, Hawkeye collapsed onto his cot and faded into unconsciousness and the first real sleep he had had in over a week.

**OOOOO**

Hawkeye awoke almost two days later, and as he headed for the showers, several people congratulated him on how well-planned the whole scheme was. No one seemed to be permanently angered by his little joke, except maybe Frank. Even Colonel Potter had a good laugh.

Everyone had decided to leave up the traces of the aliens' visit. There was transparent green plastic over the lights that lit up the compound at night, which had obviously been very quickly applied in that short period of time after the lights went out and before Lieutenant Marcus had gone up in his helicopter. Purple exorcism marks were all over doors and tentposts. Also, the 'space ship' was on display in the Mess Tent. It was rather cleverly made in a saucer shape that made it float easily down from the helicopter like a frisbee. Its frame was made out of tongue depressors and the outside was a hospital sheet, with random phrases like "Best Care Anywhere" and "I've eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish" and "I love making whoopee" painted on the side. A rope was tied to the top so it could hang from one of the capsules on the side of the choppers, with their 'alien' inside.

All in all, quite creative.

Frank had been furious when he discovered that the lights he saw were caused by Hawkeye scaling a lightpost with the aid of a ladder, and holding a metal Mess Tray above his head while Lieutenant Marcus shined a flashlight on it.

**OOOOO**

"Hawkeye... it's been great fun. Gimme a call anytime you're bored, alright?"

A neverending smile pasted on his face, Hawkeye shook the Lieutenant's hand and gave him a quick hug, laughing.

"I'll be sure to do that!"

There was a chorus of groans from behind him. With a last shake of Hawkeye's hand, William Marcus climbed into his helicopter and lifted off into the clear blue, waving as he left the camp behind.

**OOOOO**

"Colonel, I'm _bored!_"

Hawkeye stormed into Colonel Potter's office, and plopped down into a chair in front of the big wooden desk. Potter looked up and wrinkled his nose, setting down his pen, and sat back in his seat.

"Yes, Captain Pierce?"

"Colonel, I have a question for you," Hawkeye said, his face the very picture of innocence, "What do we do if..."

Potter reached beneath his desk and pulled out an old fashioned riding crop, rising halfway from his chair and brandishing it in Hawkeye's face.

"Do you want to finish that sentence, Pierce?"

The small piece of leather brushed against his forehead and Hawkeye got up very suddenly, heading for the door. Just as Colonel Potter sat down and restored the crop to its place under his desk, Hawkeye's ravenhaired head poked back into the office and he gave his best smile, inquiring

"Have you ever given a thought to rabid purple turtles? I've heard they're sweeping across the country faster than the North Kore- OKAY! OKAY!" he cried as the boot that slammed into the doorframe just barely missed the side of his head.

**End.**


End file.
